Trump Can't Hurt Amazon. It's Dumb to Try.

Many of President Donald Trump's tweets can be classified as foolhardy, but his series of recent rants about Amazon.com Inc. were over the top. I will leave to others the implications for democracy when a U.S. president singles out a company that he wants to punish, but from a business point of view, his crusade is nuts. For all of Trump's huffing and puffing, there is little he can do to inflict pain on Amazon and its chief executive, Jeff Bezos. It's amazing that he can't see it.

The president complains that Amazon doesn't pay taxes. For the most part, that hasn't been true; between 2007 and 2015, it paid a combined tax rate (for federal, state, local and foreign) of 13 percent, on par with many big companies. Last year, however, it did not pay any federal taxes. Why? It appears that Amazon was able to take advantage of some provisions in Trump's pride and joy, the tax cut he signed in December. In addition, while Amazon for years fought efforts to force it to collect state and local sales tax, it has begun doing so, even collecting from its third-party vendors. Besides, there is simply no way Trump can target one company for a different tax treatment than other companies. So much for taxes.